Golden Age of Detective Fiction

I am enjoying the #20BooksOfChristmas reading challenge That Happy Reader created and am surprised at how quickly it seems to be going. Do you like seasonal books, or do you just read whatever you want off your TBR?

Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night has been on my TBR since I recieved it last Christmas. Sophie Hannah’s fifth book in The New Hercule Poirot series has Hercule Poirot and Inspector Cathchpoole spending Christmas together at the behest of Catchpoole’s domineering mother. However, the festivities are barely underway when an impossible murder takes place.

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The Story

For mystery lovers, there’s no better way to ring in the holidays than with a new Hercule Poirot adventure. Sophie Hannah’s Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night is the fifth book in her continuation of Agatha Christie’s iconic series—authorized by Christie’s estate and infused with Hannah’s unique flair. Despite being part of a series, this was my first dive into Hannah’s Poirot mysteries, and I found it worked perfectly as a standalone novel.

Set in the days leading up to Christmas, the story begins on 19 December 1931, adding a festive touch to the mystery. Poirot teams up again with Inspector Edward Catchpool of Scotland Yard, a character Hannah introduced in her debut Poirot novel, The Monogram Murders. This time, the case takes them to Norfolk, summoned by none other than Catchpool’s formidable mother, Cynthia.

Usually preoccupied with finding a wife for her son, Cynthia arrives uninvited at Poirot’s home with a far more pressing matter: the murder of a man in the supposed safety of Ward 6 at St. Walstan’s Hospital. Her connection? A friend whose husband, Arnold Laurier, is soon to be admitted to the same hospital. Arnold’s wife, Vivienne, is convinced he’ll be the killer’s next victim—but frustratingly refuses to explain why.

Arnold, an enthusiastic fan of Poirot, dismisses Vivienne’s concerns and offers to help Poirot solve the case from within the hospital. Poirot, always ready for a challenge, accepts. But with just days until Christmas, the pressure is on if he hopes to be home for the holiday.

Their base of operations, Frellingsloe House, is as bleak as the case itself. Perched precariously on a crumbling cliff, the accommodations are Spartan, the food barely edible, and the constant fear of falling into the sea does little to inspire a restful night.

Can Hercule Poirot solve this strange mystery before Christmas?

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The Review

I have yet to be the biggest fan of Sophie Hannah’s portrayal of Hercule Poirot in her continuation of Agatha Christie’s beloved series, The New Hercule Poirot. In previous interactions, he seems too fussy and pedantic, without the signature subtle humor that permeates the original novels, especially in his adventures with Captain Hastings. However, Sophie Hannah has written her best portrayal of the character in Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night.

Sophie Hannah reintroduces Poirot’s acute fussiness and dislike of traveling during the cold English winter portrayed so well in Hercule Poirot’s Christmas—which might be my favorite Poirot novel—and replaces the rambling manor house with a crumbling old home that might fall into the English sea. This premise and Poirot’s horrified reaction to having to go to such a place made me cackle out loud.

Hannah also ramped up the comedy by introducing Catchpoole’s mother, whose flibbertigibbet ways and constant meddling provide a great foil to the relatively subdued and stolid Catchpoole. Poirot, having dealt with many well-intentioned and domineering matrons, uses flattery and ramps up his foreignness much to her delight and deftly sidesteps any quarrels between mother and son about the usefulness or even possibleness of her theories about the crime.

So what about this intriguing, impossible crime?

Sigh.

This is where the book loses much of the goodwill engendered by the delicious comic setup. For one thing, the rest of the characters are rather sad, none more so than Vivienne Laurier, who is wasting away under the strain of her husband possibly being murdered in the hospital. When Poirot questions her fears, she calms down and doesn’t explain further. This heightens the intrigue until the narrative gets stuck spinning its wheels and returns to this predicament repeatedly without plot or character progression.

Unfortunately, by returning over and over to Cynthia’s terror, the reader has no reason to give any weight to the rather slim red herrings, and with a bit of thought, it is easy to work out how the previous murder at the hospital was done, and it’s a connection to the Laurier’s. Even more unfortunate for the reader- with very little plot to progress the story, Hannah reverts to her patented over-explaining and reduces Catchpoole’s intelligence to the point of stupefaction if Poirot uses any deductive reasoning.

The excruciating overexploitation undercuts the clever ending after a hundred pages of fluff until the solution. There are plenty of good elements to the story that would have been better served if it had been written as a pithy Christmas novella with scads of precedence in the Christie cannon instead of a badly drawn-out full-length novel.

Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night is my favorite mystery in the New Hercule Poirot series with its more accurate portrayal of the titular Poirot, some fun character moments with Catchpoole and his mother, and its intriguing premise. However, it never quite delivered and still has a rather weak mystery that needs to be revised, rambling and doesn’t quite stick an impressive conclusion to the touted impossible crime mystery. It’s a mixed bag, but the best of the new series.

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#20BooksOfChristmas Reviews